In telecommunications networks, e.g., as specified by 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), it is known to provide application services to users of the telecommunications network. Examples of such application services are Internet Protocol (IP) based multimedia services. One possibility is to provide the application services by application servers in a core network (CN) of the telecommunications network. A further possibility is to add an application service (AS) platform at nodes of an access network of the telecommunications network. Examples of such access nodes are nodes of a RAN of a cellular mobile telecommunications system, such as a Radio Network Controller (RNC) of the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) or a base station of the evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN) according to 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution), referred to as E-UTRAN Node B (eNB). Such AS platform may be implemented as an open Information Technology (IT) platform which can host applications provided by the operator of the telecommunications network and also applications provided by other parties.
In a typical scenario, a user equipment (UE) connected to the telecommunications network via a given access node would access an application running on the AS platform at this access node. The AS platform could then expose useful information available at the access node to the application, e.g., information on radio channel characteristics, UE identifiers, or the like.
Since the telecommunications network is typically equipped with a plurality of access nodes, also a plurality of AS platforms may be provided. Such plurality of AS platforms may be used for providing application services in a cloud infrastructure.
Cloud computing may be defined as the provision of computing and/or storage capacity as a service to a heterogeneous community of end-recipients. It may allow access to fully featured applications, to software development and deployment environments, and to computing infrastructure assets such as network-accessible data storage and processing. A cloud computing system may be deployed privately or hosted on the premises of a cloud customer.
When using the above concept providing application services in a cloud infrastructure, network resources of the telecommunications network may be integrated with the cloud infrastructure. The possibility of using so-called carrier grade networks enables the deployment of highly demanding applications in the cloud, e.g. by providing guaranteed response times, security measures and the like. Such cloud services are also denoted as “carrier cloud”, see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Cloud. They may be distributed over several nodes of the provider network, and may also access further services or resources outside the provider network.
When providing an AS platform together with access nodes at access sites, this may however impact requirements on interfaces between the access sites and central nodes of the telecommunications network, in particular when considering that the number of such access Sites may be in the order of tens of thousands. Accordingly, a scalability problem may arise.
Accordingly, there is a need for techniques which allow for providing efficient communication between access sites equipped with an AS platform and central nodes of a telecommunications network.